When StarCraft II launches in the first half of this year, Blizzard have confirmed it will be accompanied by a Day One patch.

The update will not affect the game proper, but Lead Designer Dustin Browder explains that it is ‘essential’ in its own right, giving the Battle.net team “a little bit more time to sort of get their ducks in a row”.

“As a consumer back in the day, I always thought a day one patch was kind of a sad sign, but I’ve got to tell you, as a developer now I kind of welcome it, just for the chance to get a couple more months to really polish and work on the game a little bit longer.”

StarCraft II

In a new interview with VG247, Browder admitted that he was ‘nervous’ about Blizzard‘s impending release, particularly the networking element.

“I’m always nervous about everything we do, to be clear. I guess you’re asking if I’m especially nervous. Well, I know that we have a lot more development ahead of us on Battle.net.

“The multiplayer game, I think, is in a pretty strong space – I hope – and the community’s going to test that for us, and that seems to be going well. Battle.net does have a little bit more work ahead of it in terms of this content patch coming, but they’re also going to be working right up until the very end.”

Currently in beta testing, StarCraft II will be broken into a trilogy of expansions, with the first game launching in the coming months. Battle.net will be used to authenticate users, perform matchmaking and generally make multiplayer possible, and will also be a method of purchasing the game.

So – there we go. Only a few months left to wait, if you’re playing the beta, why don’t you let us know your experiences with it?